March 26, 2011

Red Bull's clever again.

Recently there has been some rumbling from Bernie Ecclestone about how F1 rules should not be conceived by the FIA, which is perhaps more interested in image and politics, but by the teams and the Formula 1 organizers . Bernie says, we know what we need and we should make the rules, the FIA's job should be to simply enforce them.

Hard to argue with that when the FIA mandated KERS rule can be , cleverly, circumvented as Red Bull has. Apparently one of the main technical issues this season is with the placement of ballast within the car, this year the location is restricted. Red Bull is rumored to be using a miniature version of KERS with much smaller, lighter batteries and used exclusively for the start when not having it would mean getting burned off the line. This allowed Adrien Newey to balance the car much better providing crucial drivability and blinding speed. Combine that with Vettel, who burned everyone by 7/10th, and you have a package that can only defeat itself.

Check out turns 11-12, that left-right complex on the back side of the track, the speed is absolutely mind bending.